News

Following five years of research In Europe and Asia, the collaborative efforts of Ankeney Weitz, Ellerton and Edith Jetté Professor of Art, and Research Associate Melissa Walt are making headlines in the art world. The two art historians have co-curated the exhibit No Limits: Zao Wou-Ki, the first retrospective of the Sino-French artist’s work in...

Tanya Sheehan, associate professor and chair of art, edited Grove Art Guide to Photography, to be published October 2016 by Oxford University Press. A field guide for students, instructors, and scholars, the Grove Art Guide to Photography provides a thorough overview of photography’s history, from the early 19th century to the present. This wide-ranging volume examines photographic...

As this professor procrastinated preparing her syllabus, her tweets started an academic movement. Assistant Professor of Government Laura Seay, who has 22,500 Twitter followers as @texasinafrica, uses social media extensively and got “goofing around” just before the semester began. She started tweeting those irresistible Buzzfeed-style teasers for her fall academic courses using the hashtag #ClickbaitSyllabus....

Formal academic regalia, pomp, and deep reflections about the College’s venerable purpose provided direct connections from 198 preceding opening-of-school convocations to the Sept. 6 ceremony that launched Colby’s academic year Tuesday. But much was different this year, as students, faculty, and administrators gathered for the serious business of beginning 2016-17 and welcoming the Class of...

Construction of three new state-of-the-art athletic fields for Colby’s student-athletes begins this week as workers prepare the sites near the Harold Alfond Athletic Center on the northern side of Colby’s Mayflower Hill campus. The field work is the first phase in the development of planned new athletics complex. To accommodate this new center, three fields...

A reimagined Convocation Sept. 6 will be an all-campus celebration of the academic year and the official community welcome for the Class of 2020. Customarily a first-year-focused ceremony held in Lorimer Chapel, the new tradition will take place on Miller Lawn, feature music and a faculty procession, and include students from all classes as well...

WGME13 TV spoke with Professor of Government Dan Shea about the strength of the relationship between Maine’s Governor Paul LePage and the legislature. “I think it’s fair to say that the relationship has been on thin ice,” Shea told reporter Gregg Lagerquist Aug. 30. “And this last incident … has raised the question of whether this relationship...

Kenan Professor of Government L. Sandy Maisel has an op-ed in the Aug. 19 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette titled “The Trump Phenomenon,” on Trump’s statements about a rigged system. “The danger is that Mr. Trump will convince his followers that the system defeated him,” Maisel writes. “And that may have serious consequences for our democracy.” On Aug. 21...

A World Bank Policy Research working paper authored by Assistant Professor of Economics Sahan T. M. Dissanayake and collaborators was published in a special issue of the World Bank Research Digest. Dissanayake’s paper showcases World Bank research on International Development Association countries and was published to coincide with the IDA18 replenishment meetings held in Myanmar. The...

Assistant Professor of Government Laura Seay used a series of tweets to respond to Donald Trump’s call to shut down the Clinton Foundation. An expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Seay first tweeted “Surfacing from vacation to throw some knowledge at this nonsense,” and continued “I know teens & young adults who were kids then &...

David Strohl, assistant professor of anthropology, has received a six-month writing fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Goettingen, Germany. From July to December Strohl will complete work on a manuscript for a book project titled Moral projects: social imaginaries of religious revival and civic engagement among the...

In a New York Times op-ed titled “The Decline of Unions and the Rise of Trump,” Dana Professor of Sociology Neil Gross explores why unions are not as effective at pushing their members to “overcome prejudices bearing on politics” as they have been historically. Gross asks why unions haven’t “been able to tamp down the appeal of...

Professor of Art Véronique Plesch will deliver the plenary lecture “La pared y la piel: inscripción y reinscripción, cruzando fronteras” at the Second International Symposium in Comparative Literature “Cruzando fronteras: traducción, transposición, transmutación” in Bogotá, Colombia. The symposium is organized by the Department of Literature of the National University of Colombia, in collaboration with the...

A book that Professor of English David Suchoff translated and coedited, In Those Nightmarish Days: The Ghetto Reportage of Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz, was reviewed in Forward June 11. Suchoff translated most of the subjects’ writings from Yiddish in this “compendium that takes its name from the final story, a cri de coeur about the...

When the Stanley Cup came to Colby Aug. 2—thanks to Waterville native Andy Saucier, a video coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins—it caused quite a stir. Hundreds lined up to see the trophy and have their photo taken with it, which pleased Saucier, who earned a day with the cup as part of the winning team’s...

CampusTap, Colby’s new networking platform launched this spring, has already engaged the support of more than 1,500 alumni and parents and almost 300 Colby students. The platform, similar in some ways to the professional network LinkedIn, is aimed at connecting current students and Colbians across multiple industries and fields in the service of student and...

Khalid Albaih, a cartoonist from Sudan, will come to Colby in the fall as the 2016 Oak Fellow at the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights. Albaih uses his daring, often biting cartoons to champion freedom of expression and democracy in the Arab world, while criticizing Islamophobia, torture, and drone attacks. Oak’s...

The conversion of the Grossman residence hall into a facility to house an expanded center to prepare students for future success is underway. Work began in June and is expected to be complete by fall 2017. The project involves adding a 4,300-square-foot, two-story addition to the building and upgrading the existing 8,600 square feet into...

The Colby College Museum of Art is offering a special chance to interact with art as it welcomes the public to its popular annual Community Day Sunday, July 10. Visitors can attend free musical and theatrical performances, make art in family-friendly workshops, and see the current work on view, including some of the extraordinary Picasso...

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Philip Nyhus is the editor of a new book series, “Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes,” published by Elsevier, a leading provider of scientific, technical, and medical information products and services. Books in the series focus on specific species or taxa across disciplinary boundaries and spatial scales....